Are We There Yet?

So, car dead in the middle of nowhere....yeah pretty subversive of the genre I'll give you that, although the fact I had to have a judge who had seen the film multiple times explain it to me means it kind of missed the genre mark quite badly, for mine. The reason is that yes the dead car drove the story by allowing some pretty raw self-examination and it coming back may have allowed the story to conclude but its RETURN from the dead never drove the story. This is probably just me though I'm fine if people disagree.
Script was really good, there were some moments that truly hit close to home and the editing was smooth allowing a well-paced story to develop about a couple heading to a wedding, where one of the parties was having doubts about their own relationship. The nice pacing allowed the film to breathe unlike a lot of other teams in this competition. I mean shit doesn't everyone worry about the future and doubt themselves at some point in their lives, in particular to big moments and decisions?? That was refreshing.
Other than my nagging about the genre I did note a couple of out of focus shots, and shaky camera inside the car when focused on the female lead. But those were minor technical gripes as you genuinely went out to the middle of nowhere where it was clearly windy and still managed to have pretty good audio.
Probably best to just ignore my star rating and focus on my positive comments; I'm just a stickler for genre and if the judges are on your side you're highly likely to make the Wellington final.

A car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, stranding a couple en route to a wedding. Mostly dialogue-driven, they discuss how they feel about marriage, children and their own future together. At the end the car comes back from the dead and off they go.
This was a really well written, looked good and for the most part the performances worked well especially as the film got going. Its hard making something that relies on the performers to carry off dialogue in a static location so that was really impressive. I did think the setup was a bit slow but after the first part it was well paced and engaging. Unfortunately the genre was a bit tenuous but otherwise a good film.